Weighing the Value of Director's Cuts | Scanline

you hit one million, we want the directors cut

I will never get tired of Orson Welles stating, matter-of-factly, "That's the entire significance of the cockatoo."

It’s completely taken for granted now, but the very fact that the director somehow came to be treated as the sole author of a work of art that is, by its very nature, collaborative, is really strange. Directors are routinely credited with choices that are much more likely to have been made by the screenwriter, or the editor, or any number of other creators.

I have the Alien DVD, which comes with both the original and Director's Cut versions. In the commentary, Scott directly says, "This isn't the director's cut. The original is the directors cut. It has everything I wanted it to have that was good for the film and none of the stuff added back into the director's cut works for the movie. I cut it for a reason. But because of Blade Runner, everybody wants a director's cut, so here we are."

When he said "Hey Shannon" I seriously looked up from my phone like an idiot. Had a near heart attack.

My favorite comments are the ones that say "You forgot to mention X", as if this video were meant to be a complete list of director's cuts and not, you know, a carefully constructed video essay. Anyway, great work from both of you, as always.

The bit at the end about feeling uncomfortable taking sole credit for the work of many hits slightly different (in a good way!) after the Tommy video

“Some fans are specifically asking for a ‘Snyder Cut’ of justice league”. Huh. Weird watching this now.

I need a director's cut of this that makes Harris' eyes less entrancingly blue

I now want a fifty shades of grey audiobook narrated by Harrison Ford in that same dry voice "What's going on. I am so confused."

“This movie’s Draft, much like the actual draft, is something you are morally obliged to dodge” is such a great quote lol

The sad thing about Blade Runner is that the reason Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep remains an incredibly good and popular book, aside from the strange and compelling subplots that PKD puts in everything, is the incredible sense of empathy the POV characters internal monologues create - there is one scene where Deckard realises that the toad he found isn't real, and it is a moment more devastating than nearly anything else I've read despite being as low-stakes as possible. The most powerful thing in the story is creating empathy through allowing us to feel the character's emotions in words, just as in film we see a character's emotions through performance, and they just trample it to death by having the least empathic voiceover in a good film ever made.

I heard Harrison Ford intentionally gave the worst voice over possible because he hates the idea so much. So in a way it's all his fault.

Hearing Sam Raimi speak was so uplifting. I can't even remember the last time I heard someone use the word "offended" without sounding condescending and/or repulsed. But Raimi speaks with genuine sincerity and concern about not wanting people to feel.. well, offended, because he doesn't want people to feel BAD because he wanted to have an edgy/shocking scene in a film. Even more respect for the boi <3

And the extended cuts of Lord of the Rings complicate this even further - as they were made by Peter Jackson even though he treated the theatrical cuts as the definitive version of the film. He only made the extended cuts for the fans, according to him. The extended cuts are essentially the FANS' cut, in a way.

I miss Scanline so much. I still rewatch these videos regularly. Your passion comes through in everything you do, but it's clear you really care about this stuff as a specific interest. Your shorter videos were just as excellent as your longer epics.

At 27:25 the word "benevolence" is spoken while the word "beneficence" is written. You need to make a Director's Cut of this video.

I'll be back in two years for the next scanline Harris!

Aliens is another fantastic example of a director's cut (though they call it 'extended cut'). Adding in the background information that Ripley's hypersleep made her miss the rest of her 11 year old daughter's life gives the subplot with Newt SO much more weight, and as a result there's a lot of fantastic themes about motherhood and parental responsibility that you just couldn't see clearly in the original cut.

I think David Lynch is worth bringing up as part of this debate. He was infamously refused final cut on the movie Dune but, when the movie became a commercial failure, he refused to return and do a director’s cut at the studio’s request. (Although he’s also recently hinted he might return to it now, 40 years after release due to fan demand, which I’m personally ok with since it’s more like the Blade Runner situation than Star Wars etc.) Likewise, with the Twin Peaks movie, Fire Walk with Me, even though Lynch had creative control and 3 hours of footage, he decided to limit the movie to 90 minutes in order to focus on the main story of Laura Palmer’s death. Surprisingly, the film was actually panned upon release by critics and fans alike, but Lynch liked it so much that he refused to go back and re-edit it. Cut to 20-30 years later and, lo and behold, critical opinion on Fire Walk with Me has completely changed, with many considering it one of Lynch’s most underrated works. Lynch was vindicated in his refusal to change the film. Then, in 2014, Lynch did something very interesting. He compiled the unused footage from Fire Walk with Me, and edited it into a separate companion film, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces. It’s really well done and it really works as it’s own thing, giving more focus to the side-stories happening in the background of the original film, but without interrupting the pacing and artistic integrity of the original in the way a standard director’s cut would. It’s a very neat and clever compromise on Lynch’s part.